Japanese Baseball and Management Revelations

Last week’s official start for Major League Baseball brought with it some of life’s most joyful sounds: the crack of the bat, the snap of the mitt, and the flutter of the printed page.

For Opening Day invariably means not only a new season but also a shelf full of new books about the game, including this year’s MVP (most valuable publication): Willie Mays: The Life, the Legend by James Hirsch. For those whose tastes run more to the business section, meanwhile, there is an improbable title bound to pique even their interest: What If a Female Manager of a High School Baseball Team Read Drucker’s “Management”?

Currently available only in Japanese, the novel has become a sensation overseas. It has sold more than 300,000 copies in just a few months and currently sits as the No. 3 best seller on Amazon’s Japanese list. There is talk of an English translation. (The book’s author, Natsumi Iwasaki, is donating some of the royalties to the Japan Drucker Workshop and the Peter F. Drucker & Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management; both are affiliated with the Drucker Institute, which I run.)